idcloak’s publication hopes to further raise awareness of the invasiveness of corporate tracking, where companies record user activity for behavioral profiles that they may sell on, or use themselves, for advertising.

The invasiveness of behavioral tracking is still not well-known by the public, and this is something idcloak’s Robin Welles laments: “We’re waiting for an Edward Snowden to step forward from the corporate advertising world next. It is sure to happen one day.”

In the meantime, idcloak’s article introduces how browser fingerprinting works: a regular browser allows a network of sites to identify and track one user within a crowd of 2.5 million others. idcloak reiterates EFF’s warning of the privacy implications this form of tracking holds and recommends two forms of privacy protection.

The first is a free privacy browser extension, No Script. Although the addon was developed to provide JavaScript protection, a valuable side-effect is the defense it offers against browser fingerprinting.

“When you run the NoScript Chrome or Firefox extension, you bring down the uniqueness of your browser to around 1 in 3750,” says Welles, author of the article. “If I visited a high-volume traffic site, I could easily still hide in the crowd; Facebook gets well over 100 billion hits a day. But one thing could still make me stick out: as soon as the site’s marketers find my IP address data and correlate it with my browser fingerprint, I’d be outed. They could then track me easily across every other site in their advertising syndicate network.”

As a solution, Welles recommends users employ an additional form of protection: an IP changing service, known as a proxy, “If I possess a means of how to change my IP address continuously, I will make it impossible for a site or its affiliates to be sure I am a single visitor. The proxy would help me keep my identity trail clean as I moved around online.”

idcloak is a Dallas-based company that offers information and services that help users find privacy, safety and freedom online. For more information visit http://www.idcloak.com.